Coming as no surprise, the Director of the CDC Rochelle Walensky has spoken this week about the self desired need for vaccine passports in the United States. Despite mass resistance to the idea existing from Republicans and Democrats alike, the suggestion comes at a time public trust in health officials continues to fall and cases of the virus seemingly continue to rise in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated across the country.
In a televised interview, Walensky was asked if the United States might consider implementing a vaccine passport system like those currently being implemented across other regions like Europe. In response, Walensky replied, “That may very well be a path forward.”
She followed up this response by acknowledging that, even with the vaccine, populations may still be capable of contracting the virus despite efforts saying that, “in some fully vaccinated venues… it is possible (for a fully vaccinated individual to transmit or get Covid) in those settings.”
It seems like, no matter if you are vaccinated or not, the possibility still exists to catch a variant of the virus or be a host for a mutation. While reports continue to suggest that having the vaccine reduces the possibility of hospitalization or death from the virus, reports of “breakthrough” cases have also been reported. As of July 12th, almost 5,500 people who were fully vaccinated individuals have still been hospitalized or have died from the Covid 19 virus. While these numbers are low in comparison to the number of deaths otherwise, this evidence still shows that the vaccines are not 100% effective.
Even with this information readily available to the public, Joe Biden had recently stated in a televised town hall event that, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.” Based on the “science”, this is apparently untrue.
A new study from the UK concluded that antibodies provided by the Astrazeneca or Pfizer vaccine both may start to fall after merely 6 weeks of vaccination, and for some could even further drop by 50% within 3 months time. This study was conducted by University College London (UCL) Virus Watch doing an analysis on blood from 552 vaccinated individuals.
A new study from Israel also has found that the Pfizer vaccine is about 39% effective in stopping infection from the Delta variant.
With all of this, what good would vaccine passports actually do? If vaccinated still have the potential to catch the virus and antibodies for protection given by the vaccine only potentially last for a few months, are we expected to get several shots a year and provide a passport of doing so just to be able to live out our everyday lives? This continues to seem like a ridiculous notion when considering our supposed stance as a free nation. So far, freedom has continued to reign for most of the people in America. The only division line here has been what businesses and companies are forcing their employees to be vaccinated to continue to have a job and make money. This, in itself, seems like a violation of freedom.
All of this also comes at a time when the CDC itself has just suggested again mandating mask wearing indoors, even for fully vaccinated individuals. At my hourly job working in a restaurant, this week we had to abide by the new decision and everyone, including the fully vaccinated, are required to wear masks again at all times. It is also worth noting here that several of the employees I work with have become ill and have called out from work, but all of the individuals who are currently sick have been fully vaccinated. This is strange to me.
It is also worth noting that from my personal experience, as an unvaccinated individual, I am around hundreds of different people every single day. Most of which are maskless customers. During this entire pandemic, I have not become sick a single time. I thank God for this, but I am also a healthy individual who works out every day, gets sun, walks to work willingly and eats clean food regularly.
I’m not suggesting that these actions give me any better chance of not catching Covid than anyone else, but this has been my experience. I am thankful that the vaccine exists for everyone who believes that they need it for their own personal safety, comfort and well being, but also am thankful that it has not been required. I haven’t been sick in 20 years and have never taken any medication for any issue, but that is just my own experience. For all those who feel the need, I am happy that the vaccine is available. The mask mandates, or any other future potential mandates, such as vaccine passports, I do believe are a violation of personal freedom. Everyone should have the freedom of choice and be able to make decisions for themselves and their family on their own. This is just my opinion on the matter.
Recently, hateful rhetoric has been targeted towards unvaccinated individuals from the media. This has no worth other than to merely stir up tensions between humans. If vaccinated and unvaccinated have the same potential to carry the virus or be host to a mutation, the rhetoric against unvaccinated is unwarranted. Vaccinated individuals shouldn’t hate the unvaccinated, and unvaccinated individuals shouldn’t hate the vaccinated. We should all just respect each other’s freedom of choice here. All talk otherwise is pointless and without proper backing.
With this said, mutations and future variants are an issue. Antibodies can come naturally or by vaccination, so either way defenses are built however they can be built in individuals to hopefully stand against the changes in the system. This is all that we as humans can be expected to do.
All of this also comes at a time when Biden has said that his administration is considering mandatory vaccines for all federal employees. An update on the next decisions by the administration are expected to be announced on Thursday.
Biden has also recently claimed, “We have pandemic because of the unvaccinated and they’re sowing enormous confusion. And there’s only one thing we know for sure, if those other hundred million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world.”
This is not true either, because he doesn’t know that one idea “for sure” and the evidence shows otherwise. Even if everyone was vaccinated and continually vaccinated (as benefits are short term based on studies), we would all still have the capability of potentially contracting and carrying the virus.
It is also important to note here that under emergency authorization, vaccine manufacturers are not held liable for any injury, including death, that the vaccine may cause. These have not been approved by the FDA, and is an experimental drug that is being tested on the population. For the sake of understanding, people or representatives of a deceased individual who were vaccinated have up to a year after receiving a vaccine to file a claim and prove their injury with a federal government program called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program.
Keep in mind, this only lasts a year and the long term effects of the vaccine are entirely unknown. This is why the freedom of choice matters. If individuals don’t want to take the risk of being vaccinated and would rather take the risk of Covid, that is ok. If individuals don’t want to face the risk of Covid and would rather be vaccinated, that is ok too. Both options and thoughts are ok to have, despite the rhetoric and fear mongering.
Many countries have mandated vaccine passports, but also many of those countries are experiencing mass protests on the matter. Let us hope that the United States of America doesn’t end up in the same situation, which can be avoided entirely by just choosing to respect our established freedoms as individuals.